‘The Planet of Wyh’ Uncut
Like the rest of TVWW, Alex Strachan was struck and swept over by last week’s episode of Fargo (“Who Rules the Land of Denial” 6/7/17) where several Coen Brother film tropes are reprised as Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) survives a hit squad in the middle of the Minnesota wilderness and then stumbles in an empty bowling alley, save for a ghost or god (Ray Wise) waxing metaphysical about life and the meaning of suffering. Alex also discusses Episode 3 from this season (“The Law of Non-Contradiction”), in which police officer Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) flies to LA to investigate her murdered step-father’s early career as a Hollywood screenwriter. She discovers how he got his fictitious name and his screenplay for ‘The Planet of Wyh” a tale of an android robot who travels the world for millennia witnessing the ebb and flow of civilizations and war. The animated tale of the robot’s innocence in the face of the world’s random cruelty and violence is another Fargo curveball and also what makes the show different from any other. There are a couple of uncut bootleg versions of the short to be found on YouTube, and hopefully, this one will remain online. —Eric Gould